Unsung Lullabies

This empathetic self-help book argues that when couples find out that they can't have a baby, they're inflicted with an ""unacknowledged trauma that leaves them feeling not only frustrated and angry, but sad, frightened, confused, guilty, overwhelmed and out of control."" Having found little support for their own struggles with infertility trauma, Jaffe and the Diamonds (all clinical psychologists) co-founded The Center for Reproductive Psychology in San Diego, Calif. Here they sympathetically cover the core psychological issues of the matter, including the initial shock and denial, the persistent feelings of not being ""healthy"" or ""normal,"" the relationship problems, the loss of sexual privacy, the grief and the belief that you're not really an adult until you have a child. Using their own and their patients' experiences, the authors offer many approaches to these problems: journaling, talking about infertility with your partner, practicing rituals to validate the losses, incorporating structure into your daily life and seeking out support groups and therapy. But the most important step, they say, is to recognize infertility for the trauma that it is. ""Your losses are real,"" they explain. ""Infertility does not merely represent a recent failed pregnancy, but a whole lifetime of dreams, hopes and plans that have gone horribly awry."" One in ten adults of reproductive age is affected by infertility. For them, and for the friends and professionals who want to help them, this book provides compassionate insight into infertility's often unacknowledged ramifications.